John Slattery, ladies and gentlemen! The silver-topped Mad Men regular made his series directing debut Sunday with flying colors -- both figuratively and literally, as the episode was also among the best-shot in three-plus seasons to date. And they didn't even have to slum in California or introduce outrageous new subplots to do it. Somebody! Unjump the shark!
The failures of last week's episode have been catalogued and dissected to death already, so let's just pick up at the beginning: Don and Roger have an angry Lee Garner Jr. on their hands. Or at least on their phone. As if there's any other kind -- or as if Garner can't be somewhat excused for the existential woes suddenly gripping his business. It's February 1965, an early note from Stephanie (back to her old expository-tool ways) to Don reminds us, and already we're starting to see the effects of regulatory crackdown on the tobacco industry: Ads showing teen smokers, pro athletes and/or "provocative angles" are out, which has the ad men brainstorming new tie-ins like horse racing ("No, Lee... the jockey smokes the cigarette") and others. A quick-thinking Don hits the "eject" button, contriving a fire in the neighborhood and leaping off the call with Roger. Try it with your client/boss some time; it probably works especially well over instant message.
That said, there were more metaphorical fires all over the office, beginning with Lane and Roger's order to Pete to dump Clearasil, i.e. his father-in-law Tom's low-rent skin-care brand that presents sort of an oblique conflict with Freddy Rumsen's Pond's Cold Cream account. Urged to "throw [himself] on the grenade," Pete takes a bar meeting with Tom, who has a grenade of his own, disclosing the news that Trudy -- finally -- is pregnant. Thanks, Pops! It was one of those standard-issue narrative misreads -- two characters knowing something, one drawing his gun, the other drawing back. Yet Slattery's use of inward tracking shots --kind of a rarity for Mad Men -- put an exquisite point on this and other scenes in the episode, isolating characters in ways that let scenes just die out without having to literally, physically isolate them or simply cut away on a line, which has been happening more and more as the series slides into soap-opera territory. Pete just gazes into the space over his champagne, unable to break his bad news. But it'll be for the best.
In any case, this is horrifying stuff for Trudy, who had her own occasion for the announcement. Not-so-horrifying: the Clearasil dumpage. "You needed him and now you don't." That's business; if any Mad Men wife has ever gotten that from the start, Trudy has. (Personal business, though? Not so much.) As Joey the Part-Time Copywriter will acknowledge to Peggy later on, "I would get her so pregnant." Distasteful? Definitely. Perceptive? Most definitely. She is a Grade-A keeper.
More about Peggy in a second, but quickly: Were we glad or kind of vexed to see Ken Cosgrove return? Aside from the clipped, pleasing familiarity of his delivery or his direct engagement with Pete ("Don't say sh*tty things about me behind my back"), I'm not so sure he served much purpose beyond a clever-for-'65 joke about McCann having more retarded people than a state hospital and sighing the broad declaration that he'd rather be a "slave to creative than to some old fart." Like that won't hang in the air for the next month of viewing. But the subtext of their meeting -- that Pete could (and would, in fact) aggressively corral Clearasil's companion brands from his father-in-law -- gave Pete a rare bit of leverage over Ken. He would be a slave to neither an old fart nor creative -- which amount to about the same thing in Pete's world, anyway. Captivity is captivity regardless of who minds your cage, and I guess when you can't pout your way out, go for the balls.
So. Peggy. Miss Olson attracts the neatest people, doesn't she? Or, alternatively, she has excellent elevator timing, catching a ride with a young woman clutching a folder stamped "REJECTED." "Sorry, that doesn't look good," Peggy frowns. Not to worry, the young woman, introducing herself as Joyce, explains -- she's just an assistant photo editor at Life responsible for dispatching some nudes that were vetoed for publication. "Who hates nudes?" Peggy asks, gazing at the black-and-white images. (NB: This is the "brief nudity" about which viewers were advised in a disclaimer before the show? Meta! How far we've come in 45 years!) The feminine bonding time is a prelude to something; you know these women haven't seen the last of each other, but the context of their introduction portends something a little more... friendly.
And indeed, invited later by Joyce to a downtown party, Peggy gets an eyeful of vague Warholia, a couple lungsful of pot and a nibble on the ear from her new pal. Yowza! "I have a boyfriend," Peggy responds. "He doesn't own your vagina," Joyce says. "But he's renting it." Haw. It's not even the best line of the night, but it does precipitate even more ingratiation among Peggy and this hip new crowd. The problem is that she can't help but swoon at all of them, from photographer David Kellogg ("Love your nudes!") to a lurching beatnik named Abe, with whom she's stuck in a closet -- and then a liplock, because obviously -- after the fuzz shuts down the festivities. To the extent they bust her chops over her line of work ("For anyone to sell their soul, they have to have one"), there's a certain spiritual attraction they can't really deny. When Joyce finds the pair, it's hardly cause for jealousy or propriety; it's just what friends do for each other -- followed, a little less obviously -- by a giggly sprint through the winter night.
At least Peggy gets a little entertainment outside the agency, because at the office, hoo boy, this whole Father Pete thing is more than a little grueling. She can congratulate him, but must exorcise the moment with three light taps of her head on her desk. She can escape to lunch with her fun, bubbly, colorful new pals, but her eye lingers on the overcoated cluster of patrician lifers in the SCDP lobby -- whom Pete has joined, acknowledging his sudden reality with a returned smile.
Which is to say nothing of the set piece at the center of the episode: a Faye Miller-led focus group comprising all the single young secretaries, lightly grilled in connection to Peggy's concept for the Pond's Cold Cream campaign. Never mind that Peggy's whole principle of youthful independence can't override the personal temptation to try on Dr. Miller's wedding ring (which she's given Peggy for safe keeping, lest the young ladies collapse at its sight), or that the meltdowns on the other side of the two-way mirror echo Peggy's own ingrained impulse toward marriage. Dottie may sob and Allison may angrily flee the room, but its Peggy's moral wavering that anchors the scene. "Your problem is not my problem," she spouts to Allison, whose openness to counsel is directly proportionate to Peggy's relatability -- which, when it comes to the "slept with drunk Don after the Christmas party" front, isn't quite there.
Of course, Allison's problem is Peggy's problem insofar as she suffers inequitably for her indiscretions. Pete gets to go off and be a husband and expectant father; Don gets to go off and have his slappy hookers. Sure it's all a little on the nose, but the fundamental point of the feminist ethos Peggy's been noodling with for at least two seasons now is what she told her old secretary Olive one late night back at Sterling Cooper: "I am going to get to do everything you want for me." But as long as Peggy can't recognize the epidemic neuroses of her fellow travelers are in fact variations of her own, then this is not progress. (Though at least Matt Weiner and co-writer Keith Huff get the black humor of it all, entitling Freddy to his priceless line to Peggy upon her return to the observation room, "Nothing else good happened.")
The focus-group scene -- and everything in its orbit, including Don's own climactic, proto-feminist throwdown with Dr. Miller -- works thanks to Slattery's direction. The guy covered the hell out of the sequence, enabling a sense of participation on both sides of the glass and finally bringing that live, moving camera to bear on the aftermath. The reaction shots were perfect -- Faye to Don, Allison to Faye, Don to Freddy, Allison to Don, Don to Peggy -- and the act of Joan opening and closing the curtain over their two-way proscenium was one of those little flourishes you can't help but smile at.
Moreover, just the way the episode was lit was inspiring: the jags of daylight stabbing the blue wall behind Pete and Ken at lunch; the coal black and dirty white of Don's aborted letter to Allison (oh, who quit in a huff, by the way, leading to the other classic touch of Peggy peeping over the office partition for a glimpse at the carnage in Don's office); the half-occupied backdrop of Madison Avenue at night -- so late that Don slinks out in the shadows behind the janitor. It's always been an impressively shot series with cinematographer Christopher Manley at the controls (particularly inside the Draper residence), but this was another level of visual storytelling altogether that was exactly the reassurance I'd hoped for after last week's crushing misfire.
I'd say Slattery and Co. ended it perfectly with that exquisite, wordless exchange between Pete and Peggy, but that little coda of aged married life in Don's apartment corridor -- no one in the history of television has ever needed pears so insistently -- might have been one glimpse too many into the extraordinary relationship dynamics throughout the episode. As the elderly wife said, "We'll discuss it inside." So: Let's discuss.